A Cotswold Casebook Read online

  ‘He won’t need us to be here. In fact, he probably hopes we’ll go out somewhere, and leave him and Andrew to get on with it.’

  ‘So where can we go?’ Stephanie sighed softly. Outings with Thea were mostly okay, but sometimes she made them walk too far, or started telling them boring history about Cotswoldy things. Sheep, or canals, or ruined monasteries. It was hardly ever interesting. The best ones were when they went to a town and did shopping and had lunch somewhere like KFC. Thea and Dad both thought KFC was awful, but a bit less so than McDonalds, for some reason. Neither of them would let Hepzie in, though, so if she was with them, they mostly went to pubs and sat in the garden.

  ‘That’s what we have to decide,’ said Thea. ‘So far, the plan seems to be that you and Tim polish the hearse for a bit, and then we get out of here well before the funeral. Like eleven o’clock. It’s nearly nine now, so that gives us loads of time.’

  Then Dad and Timmy came down together, and Hepzie gave the little boy an exuberant greeting, which was lavishly appreciated. Stephanie watched with her customary mixed feelings. Everything about her brother was tinged with a sadness that would never go away. Even when they were playing something wild, shrieking and laughing and getting out of breath, it was never completely happy. Quite often she thought it must be her fault somehow. She had stolen too much of Dad’s love by being the first to be born. She could read Dad’s mind and Timmy couldn’t. And people usually liked her more. People such as teachers and other children. Sometimes it made her wish Timmy would just disappear, so everything would be less complicated.

  She could see that her stepmother was making a real effort to be nice. She was always looking for interesting places to visit that weren’t going to be crowded and expensive. (‘Stepmother’ was a word she had only recently begun to apply to Dad’s new wife, as a result of a conversation with two girls at school who explained the whole thing to her, in airy tones of patronage.)

  ‘Mickleton Tunnel might be worth a look,’ said Thea now. ‘Timmy – you like trains, don’t you?’

  The boy looked up at her. ‘Are we going somewhere on a train?’

  ‘No, no. I don’t think they run there any more. But the tunnel’s still there. It took five years to build it and there was a big fight. A riot, in fact. It must all have been very exciting. Isambard Kingdom Brunel did it himself, and he’s the most famous engineer of that time. There are quite a lot of disused railway tunnels around here, actually. I’ve even been inside one of them.’

  Timmy made no attempt to respond. ‘Mm,’ was all he said.

  But Thea was not daunted – which Stephanie did admire in her. ‘Listen, Tim – this is where we live now. We ought to find out as much as we can about the area, don’t you think?’

  He shrugged. ‘When was the fight in the tunnel, then?’

  ‘Quite a long time ago. But the point is, people still talk about it, and try to understand exactly what happened, and why.’

  Stephanie felt obliged to intervene. ‘Is there anything to do there?’ she asked. ‘Can we go in the tunnel? Or the other one, that you’ve been in?’

  ‘No,’ Thea admitted. ‘And you wouldn’t want to, really. It’s cold and wet and dark and scary.’

  ‘Like a grave,’ said Stephanie, feeling rather pleased with herself.

  ‘Horribly like a grave, except you can at least breathe, and people can hear when you shout.’

  Stephanie gave her brother a little nudge. Being buried alive was one of their favourite games. They used the small space underneath the bunk beds as an approximation. They regularly asked Drew whether it had ever ever happened. And he always stoutly denied that there was any chance at all that it could. But Stephanie had caught a look between Dad and Thea that made her doubt his assurances.

  They had played the game for as long as she could remember. It might even have begun before Mummy died. So when she had to be buried, the game became horribly real, and Stephanie had upsetting dreams that made her cry. She had begged Dad not to put Mummy in the Peaceful Repose field, and by a wonderful miracle, he had listened to her and done what she asked.

  Except now it didn’t matter, because they didn’t live there any more anyway.

  ‘Can we go to a town?’ asked Timmy. ‘I want to buy things.’

  ‘What things?’ asked Thea.

  ‘Don’t know, really.’

  ‘We will know when we see it,’ said Stephanie impatiently.

  ‘Well, we could try Moreton, I suppose. I could get some light bulbs. And then maybe you’d like a garden centre, if we can find one. They’ve got all sorts of things in the big ones. Toys, books, kitchen stuff. How about that?’

  The children gave a cautious endorsement of this plan. Garden centres were okay. ‘Can we take Hepzie?’ Stephanie added.

  ‘Probably not. Only in the outside part, I expect. I could have a look at the roses. Your father did say we should have some in pots to show people, in case they want to plant one on a grave.’

  Stephanie laughed at this, imagining a rose bush growing out of the middle of a dead person, its roots twining around the insides and the backbone. Sometimes, they didn’t use a proper coffin, but just wrapped the body up in hessian or woven sticks. She thought she might draw a picture of it when she had some spare time.

  ‘What’s funny?’ asked Thea, and got no answer.

  So they went to a garden centre somewhere near a place Thea said was called Stanton, which she had stayed in not very long ago, and it was huge, and Thea let them wander around it on their own, while she looked at roses outside with Hepzie. Stephanie became fascinated with a collection of garden gnomes, each one with a different expression and a different implement for gardening. They were lined up on a shelf, and she pretended they were alive, whispering to each other, and then jumping down to play in the night when all the people had gone.

  When she looked round, there was no sign of Timmy, but she wasn’t worried. He couldn’t come to any harm. Even if he went outside or into the car park, he was old enough not to get run over. He had probably gone to the loo, she decided. If so, he’d be away quite a while. He took absolutely ages to wash his hands and dry them.

  So she wandered into another area of the enormous shop and found a pile of rugs, which she carefully looked at, one by one. She wanted a rug for her bedroom. The new house had enough rooms for her and Timmy to get one each. He had the bunk beds, sleeping in the bottom one, and she had a new bed all of her own. Thea kept asking if they had any friends who’d like to come for a sleepover, but there was no chance of that. All Stephanie’s friends were left behind in Somerset, and they never even emailed her, even though Dad had organised her own personal email address on his computer. He was so behind, he didn’t understand that nobody sent emails any more.

  The rugs were lovely, and she pulled out a red and purple one she especially liked. Then she heard some noise from the front, where the tills were, and decided to see what was happening.

  ‘Take that dog out!’ somebody was shouting. ‘No dogs in the store.’

  ‘So how do you expect me to pay for these plants?’ Thea’s voice rang out clear and bossy. She was only small, but people always had to take her seriously. Stephanie felt a mixture of admiration and embarrassment, and hurried to the spot.

  ‘I’ll take her out,’ she said. ‘And can I have a new rug for my room? They’re over there. I want the red one. It’s on top of the pile.’

  Thea handed over the dog lead, and said, ‘How much is it?’

  ‘Eleven ninety-nine. It’s not very big.’

  ‘I’ll go and have a look. Where’s Tim?’

  ‘Somewhere around. He might have gone to the loo.’

  ‘When did you last see him?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was looking at the gnomes, and he must have gone off then. He’s here somewhere.’

  ‘Take that dog out,’ said a woman.

  ‘Actually, Marion, we don’t ban dogs in here,’ said a man who was trotting towards them look
ing rather anxious. ‘It’s a matter of discretion. Big bouncy ones can be a problem, but I think we can allow this one.’ He smiled at Thea.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Now, can I leave these roses here, while I go and find my little boy?’

  ‘And look at the rug,’ Stephanie reminded her. She wanted to say He’s not your little boy, but decided to save it for another time.

  ‘Of course,’ said the man.

  ‘You haven’t seen him, have you? A boy on his own?’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Almost nine.’

  ‘What’s he wearing?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Jeans. Trainers. The usual things.’

  ‘Nine,’ repeated the man thoughtfully. ‘That’s old enough to find his way around. Did he go back to your car, perhaps?’

  Thea gave Stephanie a questioning look. ‘Did you fall out with him?’ she asked.

  ‘No! Not at all. I don’t know where he is. Come and see the rug.’

  ‘Shut up about the bloody rug. We’ve lost your brother. Give me the dog. I’ll go and see if he’s gone to the car.’ She grabbed the lead and charged off, leaving Stephanie and the shop man to follow if they chose. Stephanie felt a great fury building inside her from the injustice of the sudden change of manner. Next thing, Thea would be blaming her for Timmy going off. And all the time, he was sure to be in the loo. That was where he always was. He liked to see different toilets, and play with the squirty soap thing.

  ‘He’ll be in the loo,’ she said loudly.

  ‘All right. We’ll go and see, then.’

  The man was really quite nice and sensible, she decided, as she followed him through a large expanse of the shop. They passed her rug on the way, which made her feel cross again.

  ‘I’ll pop in and see if he’s there,’ said the man. ‘And if he’s in any sort of trouble, I’ll call you, okay?’

  Stephanie privately thought that the system where men and women went into different toilets was stupid. It didn’t happen like that at home, and it only made everything complicated and embarrassing. Timmy had used the Ladies until quite recently, because he said it smelt nicer. Stephanie remembered Dad taking her to the Gents when she was younger. ‘What sort of trouble?’ she asked in puzzlement.

  But the man had gone. She waited almost no time at all before he came back again. ‘Nope. Nobody in there,’ he reported. There was a line between his eyes and his mouth had gone tight. ‘Now what?’ he asked, although she didn’t think he was really expecting her to answer. ‘We’d best go and find your mother,’ he decided.

  ‘She’s not our mother,’ said Stephanie. ‘She’s only just got married to my father. My mother’s dead.’ She always felt a small stab of satisfaction when she said that. It had such a dramatic effect on people, and made her feel special. It made Mum feel close, so she could almost hear her laughing at the very idea that she had actually died.

  ‘Ah. I see. Well, she’s in charge of you, in any case. Come on.’ He lifted an arm towards her, and she understood that he was intending to take her hand. Then he changed his mind and let it fall again. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered. ‘My little girl is only five, so I have to hold her hand most of the time.’

  She was glad he had his own child. It gave him added substance in her eyes.

  ‘I’d go crazy if she ever went missing,’ he added. ‘It’s every parent’s nightmare.’ His voice had gone funny, and she noticed his hands were in tight fists.

  ‘Timmy’s okay,’ she said. ‘He’s just here somewhere.’

  ‘Yes, but where?’ he demanded, sounding a bit like Thea, only even more worried.

  Stephanie was feeling rather a failure, now that Timmy was not where she’d said he’d be. She looked all round the great expanse of the shop, trying to get a hint of his whereabouts. It was so big and so full of things like furniture and lawnmowers and tubs full of bulbs, that it seemed impossible to guess where one small boy might be. ‘I expect I can find him,’ she said, with an exaggerated confidence.

  ‘I can’t let you go off on your own as well,’ he protested. ‘Then we might have two missing children.’

  ‘I promise not to leave the shop,’ she said.

  The man’s worried frown had deepened. When Thea came in again, making a sort of storm around herself, so that everyone knew she was there, he hurried towards her. Stephanie moved inconspicuously towards the far back of the store, because she had had an idea.

  There were several small tents erected in a pretend campsite, with various chairs and portable stoves and sleeping bags scattered around.

  ‘Tim?’ she whispered, at the entrance to a domed orange tent. ‘Are you in there?’

  ‘Here,’ came a breathy reply, from a triangular blue neighbour. ‘In here. Come in quick.’

  He was sitting at the back of the tent, looking scared. ‘Sit down,’ he ordered her. ‘Don’t let them see you.’

  ‘Who?’ Her first thought was that he was playing a game with some imaginary Pokémon monsters, and would get into extreme trouble with Thea as a result.

  ‘There’s a man and a woman outside. The man was in the Gents. He was on his phone and he said he was going to do the job right away. He didn’t know I heard him. I followed him, and he went out to the place where they’ve got stone statues of rabbits and Greek people. He picked up a rabbit and hit another man on the head with it. He’s out there now. He’s probably dead. The woman was keeping watch, and I think she might have seen me, so I ran away and hid in here.’

  Stephanie pushed her face right up to his, and put her hands on his shoulders. ‘Is all that really true?’ she demanded.

  ‘True as true as true,’ he assured her. ‘I saw a murder. And now they’ll murder me if they can.’

  ‘Are you sure they saw you?’

  He hesitated and then shook his head. ‘I think they didn’t, really. I hid in here just in case.’

  ‘Thea thinks you’ve been abducted.’

  ‘They always think that.’

  The children had both been treated to harangues at school about stranger danger and people who wanted to hurt children and cross boundaries and generally do very nasty things. It provided good material for games afterwards, and made for great excitement in those rare moments when there was no supervising adult in sight, but nobody really had much idea of what it all meant in actual physical terms. Strangers were some peculiar breed that were not at all like the boring, inattentive, busy people who filled the streets and shops and cinemas. Strangers lurked behind hedges or jumped out of cars and grabbed you just when you were minding your own business.

  So Timmy’s killer must be one of these, or something very close to it. ‘We can just tell the man and take him to look at the body, and everything’ll be all right,’ she said. ‘The murderer will have gone by now, anyway. You’re perfectly safe.’

  ‘I was very scared,’ he said.

  ‘You were clever to hide in here without anybody seeing.’

  ‘I ran all round in a big circle, and nobody took any notice of me. There’s hardly anybody in here anyway. But grown-ups can’t run – did you know that? I mean, they can, but if they do, they look stupid, and other people notice them and wonder what’s going on. I thought the woman might follow me, so I pretended to go outside again, so she would have lost me because I was clever,’ he concluded.

  ‘Come on. We’ll have to tell Thea all about it. She knows about murder.’

  ‘Maybe Dad can do his funeral.’

  ‘That would be great,’ said Stephanie, still quite a long way from believing that a man really was lying dead amongst the garden statues.

  They crawled out of the tent, almost into the arms of Thea and a man they hadn’t seen before. Both their faces were angry, but also astonished. That sort of look that says I don’t believe you could do something so awful. At least it stopped them from shouting or even talking. Stephanie seized her chance.

  ‘Tim was very cleverly hiding from a man who wanted to hurt him,’ she expl
ained. ‘It was a stranger, who has done something terrible.’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ said Thea. ‘We’re going home. No nice lunch for you two. I’ve had more than enough for one day.’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ Stephanie shouted. ‘You’re not listening.’ She turned to Timmy. ‘You tell them.’

  The boy cringed and Stephanie’s heart lurched. He was so obviously frightened. ‘I want Daddy,’ he whimpered. The only person in the world he could still rely on, his sister realised. And even Dad had gone and married this uncomprehending woman who wasn’t capable of keeping them safe.

  ‘It’s what Stephanie said,’ he choked out. ‘There was a man, and I was hiding from him. And a lady, as well. The man hit someone outside.’

  ‘At least go and have a look,’ insisted Stephanie. ‘Then you’ll see if he was making it up or not.’

  Thea paused. ‘I never said he was making anything up. But I do think we’ve caused enough trouble for these people, don’t you? They’ve got the entire staff out looking for you.’

  ‘No, no,’ soothed the woman from the tills, who had just joined them. She seemed to have had a complete change of heart since shouting at Thea about the dog. ‘The manager asked me to come and tell you everything’s under control now. He says it’s nothing we can’t handle. All in a day’s work.’ She smiled and lifted her shoulders, looking from face to face.

  The new man who’d turned up with Thea seemed to disagree. ‘The lad’s got a story to tell,’ he said. Stephanie had noticed the way he watched Timmy’s face from the moment he crawled out of the tent. ‘We should maybe listen to him.’ The words sounded friendly, but the voice did not. Timmy cringed against his sister and said nothing.

  The man was big, with very short hair and straight black eyebrows. Thea, standing beside him, looked about half his size. ‘Don’t worry about that,’ she said. ‘The main thing is, we’ve found him. Now, let me just pay for those roses and we’ll be out of your way.’